Welsh Journals

MONTGOMERYSHIRE POLITICS: CLEMENT DAVIES AND THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT J. GRAHAM JONES. M.A.. Dip. Lib.. A.L.A.. D.A.A. When Clement Davies entered the House of Commons as Montgomeryshire's representative in June 1929, he was already forty-five years of age. Somewhat reluctantly, he had abandoned an especially promising and lucrative career as a barrister in order to come to the rescue of the Montgomeryshire Liberal Association which had found itself in an appallingly difficult situation during 1926 and 1927. This situation had been brought about by the decision of David Davies, the county's Liberal representative in Parliament ever since 1906, to stand down because of his opposition to the new Liberal proposals for radical land reforms embodied in the contentious 'Green Book', The Land and the Nation, and to the administration and employment of the infamous Lloyd George fund. Clement Davies, however, a native of Llanfyllin with impeccable Liberal antecedents, was a devoted, if not an uncritical, supporter of David Lloyd George. When selected as parliamentary candidate in November 1927, he had defined himself as 'a Liberal without a prefix or a suffix'. 'I am a supporter of Mr. Lloyd George', he confessed, 'I have always been a supporter of him, but I am not an out-and-out supporter of anybody. I will test them by their measures.'3 In a closely fought and lively election campaign, he had succeeded in withstanding a powerful Conservative onslaught from J. Murray Naylor, and had been returned to Parliament, full of enthusiasm and optimism for the Liberal cause, by a majority of just over 2,000 votes. Indeed, in the 1929 Parliament the Liberals enjoyed an influence and a prestige out of all proportion to the measly total of fifty-eight M.P.s returned to the Commons, for they held the balance of power between the two major parties, and were thus responsible for keeping the minority Labour Government in office. Initially, many Liberal Members were well satisfied with the performance of their Labour colleagues. Their number included Clement Davies, who praised the enactments of the Labour Government and became a warm admirer of the efforts of William Graham, the President of the Board of Trade, to alleviate the distress in the coalfield valleys of south Wales, and who described-Philip Snowden, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as 'one of the ablest Chancellors of Exchequer that ever graced any Cabinet.'4 Although Davies's position in the politcal spectrum was difficult to describe, it is evident that he remained true to the radical, progressive ideas which he had advanced in Montgomeryshire between 1927 and 1929, and had supported the Labour Government on a number of important issues such as the repeal of the Trades Disputes Act and the Agricultural Marketing Bill. The Montgomeryshire Liberal Association was well satisfied with its Member's performance. At the Annual General Meeting of its Council in February 1930, T. Hughes Jones, a former Organising Secretary, declared, 'We did not sent up a member to swell the ranks of somnolent Conservatism or the disaffected ranks of Socialism but one who has taken his place worthily among what the Liberal leader has aptly termed "the gate-keepers of legislation"5 'The story of Clement Davies's selection as parliamentary candidate in November 1927 and election to Parliament in May 1929 has already been recounted in some detail in J. Graham Jones, 'Montgomeryshire politics: Lloyd George, David Davies and the "Green Book" Montgomeryshire Collections, Vol. 72 (1984), p.79-98. 2See ibid., p.86-90. 3Montgomeryshire Express, 22 November 1927. Hbid., 24 September 1929. Montgomeryshire Liberal Association, Newtown, Mont. Lib. Assoc. minute book, 1920-60, A.G.M. Council minutes, 22 February 1930.